Knut Hamsun

ove makes a fool of the wise. Isak felt he must do something grand himself, and overdid it. "What I was going to say; you've no need to bother with hoeing potatoes. I'll do it myself the evening, when I come home."
And he took his ax and went off to the woods.
She heard him felling in the woods, not so far off; she could hear from the crash that he was felling big timber. She listened for a while, and then went out to the potato field and set to work hoeing. Love makes fools wise.

thought it over. What a mind, to hit on that all at once, and save himself!

come nearer to her by treating her with indifference and scorn.

endure it, for I love the

hand that drags me.’

And then, again, he would go all through the week, from Sunday to Sunday, without a wash.

And in the morning, before the sun was up, and the evening, after it had gone, there was always a shiny drop hanging from the tip of his nose.

I, too, he suggests, would be better advised to give over sighing for ladies of high degree, and go back to my own rank and station.

was Frøken Elisabeth and no other I was in love with; she was not full of changing humours, and was just as pretty as the other—ay, a thousand times prettier. I would go and take work at her father’s place....